Intro

UGM, Maribor Art Gallery, Strossmayerjeva ulica 6, Maribor, Slovenia

Nestan Nijaradze / Contemporary Photography from the Caucasus

Saturday, 22 October 2016, at 18:00

Nestan Nijaradze will present contemporary photography from the Caucasus area and the Tbilisi Photo Festival, which was established in 2010 with Nestan as its artistic director from the very beginning. The Tbilisi Photo Festival has already achieved extreme public visibility, and it isn’t only the region’s most important photo event – it is also the most important cultural event in the Caucasus. From the very beginning it has been supported by partners such as the prestigious Photo Festival in Arles. This year the Festival in Tbilisi hosted more than 200 photographers from 20 different countries. The main event of the festival is the Photography Night, which includes numerous outdoor projections and has had more than 10,000 visitors. The main aims of the festival are to create a meeting point for photography from different areas (Asia, Iran, Turkey, Europe, Russia and Saudi Arabia), to introduce the best in the field of world photography, and to promote young local photographers.

Nestan Nijaradze (b. 1971) is the co-founder and artistic director of TBILISI PHOTO FESTIVAL in Georgia, an internationally recognized curator of photography exhibitions, a writer, a TV broadcast host on Georgian national television, an expert in portfolio evaluations at various prestigious festivals, and a promoter of Georgian photography. Between 2007 and 2015, she worked as the director of the House of Photography; between 2007 and 2009, she worked as the main director of PHOTO Magazine; in 2007 she introduced the first permanent collection of Georgian photography; between 2008 and 2009, she coordinated a project for the MAGNUM agency in Georgia. She has a degree in visual art studies from the University of Tbilisi in Georgia, and a master’s degree from the University of Paris-Diderot in Paris. In Georgia, she has represented various Western photographers from numerous institutions (Robert Capa, Stanley Greene, Guiorgui Pinkhassov, Vanessa Winship, etc.), and she regularly promotes Georgian photography (Natela Grigalshvili, Newsha Tavakolian, Guram Tsibakhashvili, Shalva Alkhanaidze) during various world festivals.

The lecture will be held in English and will not be translated.

Klavdij Sluban / Presenting the Author’s Photographic Work
Saturday, 22 October 2016, at 19:00

Klavdij Sluban will present his new projects, including his “silent videos” from Japan. At the beginning of this year he dedicated this project to Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694), who is known as one of the greatest experts in haiku poetry. Klavdij walked the Bash route, a 500 km journey on foot from Kyoto to Tokyo, and was able to immerse himself in Japan’s culture and countryside. He received an award for photography from the Academy of Fine Art for an intimate and poetic series called “Divagation – sur les pas de Bashō”.

For the first time he will also present his photgraphs from the juvenile detention centers, Mario Covas in Arujà in San Paulo, Brazil and from the Fleury-Mérogis Center in France. Between 1995 and 2000 he held photography workshops and also invited other well-known photographers, such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Marc Riboud and William Klein to collaborate with him. The point of Sluban’s prison photography is not reportage. He focuses on the limitations of time and habitat, defined by the limits of a prison.

Klavdij Sluban (b. 1963) is a French photographer with Slovenian roots. He gained public and critical acclaim with his completely personal approach to photography. His works are seen all over the world in museums and galleries. Since 1995 he has been active in workshops for young prisoners. He has received important international photography awards, such as the European Publishers Award for Photography (EPAP, 2009), the Niepece Award (2000), which is the most important French award for photography, and the Leica Award (2004). One of the awards most dear to him is his Deklica s piščalko award from Kočevje, where he spent his childhood.

The lecture will be held in Slovene.

No entrance fee.